The Ecology of Psychology

The whole field of mental health, therapy, personal and family therapy is like a huge forest. There are the big trees that provide the canopy. Many species of those from very different families. Then layers of stuff that goes right down to the rare fungi and microscopic little weird things that are not even classified. Occasionally some hardy species will find its way to the sunlight above the canopy and bloom.

As part of the ecology of philosophies, methods, theories, schools and breakaway schools there are the regulating bodies, some governmental and some tied in with professional organisations. There are external factors influencing the cycle like in any ecosystem, education systems, insurance systems and political realities. Epidemics are not uncommon and the whole ecosystem is evolving, rapidly, fuelled by waves of things that go viral on the Internet, by marketing strategies and new inventions.

Is it just nature with everything in its own niche, something we can admire as mirroring the complexity of the human psyche? I think Jung said that somewhere.

Or is it a process which, on the one hand, is full of weeds taking us down false pathways towards violence and war or to isolation and continuation of madness and on the other hand there maybe species struggling to to survive that could be part of assisting humanity to survival. Are there some things that are more progressive than others?

The question is a bit like the debate about regulation and the market.